


The Journal of Adalynn Knight

by Crowsister



Series: Meddling Metas [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Diary/Journal, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, canon characters tagged are mentioned rather than the direct writers of the journal, first person POV, those characters just show up a bunch in ada's life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-03 09:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 17,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17281187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowsister/pseuds/Crowsister
Summary: A leather-bound journal, encrypted with two separate book ciphers and partially in a language not found on Earth anymore.The journal of my tabletop character, Adalynn Knight. Game is run by SuperKamiGodEspurrOfMan (aka Lili), who is the one that does all the world-building for this zany crossover. Me? I just write Ada. This is her journal as events happen to her in the Meddling Metas game. I'd recommend reading Owl from my Meddling Metas series first to get a good idea of her character first before diving into this.





	1. 10/2/87

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuperKamiGodEspurrOfMan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperKamiGodEspurrOfMan/gifts).



> Some general OOC setting stuff to start off with:  
> -Reed Richards and Victor von Doom are morality swapped in this universe. Victor goes by "Monarch" as his superhero name and he's 18-19 (Reed's around the same age and goes by the Maker. A lot of people from canon comics are generally younger than you'd think)  
> -The Charles mentioned isn't Charles Xavier. It's an OC named Charles Mills. He's a precious bab and I love him. But not as much as Ada loves him. He's been Ada's best friend since they were absolutely tiny. Xavier _does_ show up, but much, much later as an adult.  
> -The differentiation that Marvel does, between X-men mutants and Inhumans? Not here in this setting at all. Everybody's an Inhuman. It's easier that way, narratively.  
> -Tony Stark in this setting is 14-15 years old and is Lex Luthor's son. He commonly goes by Anthony and Ada's the one who gave him the Tony nickname.

I’m starting a new chapter of my life. That’s the be-all-end-all of what’s happening right now. Charles has to live at work  ~~ after Avery got him kidnapped ~~ he got kidnapped, so let’s re-eval us, shall we me?

Hypothesis: By living by the Shirumare Substratum, I will thrive only when I’m allowed to be what I am.

Shirumare Substratum: Do what you enjoy, what makes you happy, what you’re good at. Surround yourself with people that make you happy. Everything else takes care of itself.

First: Happy vs. Enjoy. What does it mean? Doing things I enjoy  makes me happy, yeah? That’s how I always thought of it, but Sensei made the two distinct. I can’t exactly ask him why now, so reasoning time.

Happy:

  1. feeling or showing pleasure or contentment


  * having a sense of confidence in or satisfaction with (a person, arrangement, or situation)
  * satisfied with the quality or standard of
  * willing to do something



*   
fortunate and convenient   

  

*   
inclined to use a specified thing excessively or at random   


Enjoy:

  1. take delight or pleasure in (an activity or occasion)
  2. possess and benefit from



Both entail pleasure, but one is an adjective (happy) and the other is a verb (enjoy). So they’re definitely  connected . Maybe, while they’re the same goal, stating their similar goals is to firmly establish that, above all else, happiness is important.

  * What do I enjoy?
    * Reading
    * Poking at machinery, hardware
    * Being with friends
    * Helping people
  * What makes me happy?
    * Doing what I enjoy
    * That stint of quiet, from 11 pm to 1 am, where the city’s transitioning from evening to night, and everything seems a bit calmer
    * Cinnamon in whipped cream, either on top of hot chocolate or coffee
    * Little owl noises. So cute!
    * Cat noises. Also cute.
    * The fact that I’m not alone anymore. Or, at least, I don’t feel as alone as I did before today. I don’t feel as stupid or alone or helpless. I have a team and, for now, they want me on the team.
  * What am I good at?
    * Fixing and poking at mundane tech
    * Analyzing things (though, that’s more Flynn on like. Some stuff. I put the pieces together though!)
    * Getting specific people to smile
    * Analyzing books and poetry
    * Keeping my head down and getting through bad environments
  * Who makes me happy?
    * Charles
    * Aaron
    * Isabel
    * Wanda
    * Richard
    * Mom
    * Father



So okay. I keep questions 1-3 in mind and that’s a good road-map. Question 4 might change, depending on how long people want me around, but this? This is a start.

I can’t use owls as a focus for this chapter, though. The Parliament’s out there and I don’t want that association. Once they’re done, I can be Night Owl. But right now...I know Sensei said I can only thrive when I’m allowed to be what I am, but I’m growing. Let’s look at it this way: Night Owl’s a pair of boots that I have to fill and they’re too big right now because a bunch of jerks took the sides of the boots and stretched them.

Right now, I haven’t earned my wings. So, riddle me this: what do we call a flightless owl? Sensei would say sad, but I say: a cat.

Owls are stealth, speed, intelligence, muffled, haunted, vigilant. Cats, on the other hand, are stealth, speed, climbing, poise, balance, and grace. There’s some overlap, it’s not like I’m trying to be wolf, bear, or tiger (Sensei would come haunt me if I was trying to be Aaron). Cats are also coy, sass, and wit also, which are  also things I’m working on. If I end up as a cat forever, well, it’s not a tragedy. It just means I’ve grown since Sensei’s seen me. Or, a truly blasphemous thought, maybe Sensei was wrong and I was a cat the whole time. The whole thing was, is a rhetorical device anyway, to help me focus.

I can’t be:

  * Aaron, big, muscular, proud, snarly, territorial tiger 
  * Wanda, boisterous, excited, enthusiastic, winging-it magpie
  * Richard, patient, humorous, skilled, witty bird 
    * what kind, I’ve yet to pin down. To say he’s a robin would be...a little too on the nose right now? He’s a bird though: I know the movements of bird that Sensei showed me and Richard moves like one
  * Avery, analytical, judging, paradoxical reckless-cautious poodle no not poodle that’s a little mean dog
    * Putting beef with him aside, Avery always comes when called. Suggests loyalty, desire to get into stuff, desire for a group environment, or all of the above. Maybe lonely?
  * Charles, analytical, intelligent, clever, focused crow



What was it that Charles told me once? “It’s improbable that you’ll ever be just like me. You’ve got too much of you to be me.” Then he drew me a chart, breaking down all the ways we were different and all the ways we were the same and said it was okay. We are a pie chart, a unit. Like that one quote from Bones: “In this galaxy, there’s a mathematic probability of three million earth-like planets, and in all of the universe, three million million galaxies like this, and in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us.” (Yes, me, the Star Trek quote binder is still kicking. We haven’t thrown it out yet)

There’s only one me. One Adalynn Knight. I can’t be anyone or anything else.

So I’ll be cat. Cat’s a good place to be. If the term witch isn’t a slur or anything awful, maybe suggest a duo between me and Wanda. Witch and Cat. All of our combo moves could be themed around that. It’d be good for her, I think, to have someone on the team that she can think as as a partner. Charles helped me that way, it’s time to pay it forward.

Charles. I’m gonna miss Charles. I’m scared for him. He’s caught up in a lot of stuff and I couldn’t tell him because who knows who was listening over the phone? The Maker guy? Lex Luthor? The government? The police? A gang boss? Aliens?

Cats are poise. Grace, elegance. Composed. Me panicking won’t help Charles. We’ll watch, perched on patient feet. And every justice god better be behind me as I claw out this Maker guy’s throat if he hurts Charles or they won’t be worth their salt.

I’m already settling into cat. Good: will need to be focused to keep up with Dick. I don’t want him regretting having faith in  me us. He put his neck on the line for us, I think. I can’t even imagine trying to argue Batman into something. If Dick had to do that for us, I’m gonna do the best I can. I’ll prove his belief in me right.

I’ll need to hunt down Selina. I’ll need everything I can learn and Selina’s learned to be a cat far longer than me. She’s had more experience at it. Some extracurricular learning would be handy, if she’s willing to teach me. It’s a big if, but one that might pay off in spades. Imagine if she teaches me something that impresses Dick!

Wait, let’s examine that a second. I want to impress Dick. It’s  not like Wanda wanting to impress Monarch. I am not going to trip over myself to impress him. I am cat: poised. Methodical. I don’t have a crush on Dick. He’s cute and charming, but I’ve got  no time for that. There’s a world to save, things to learn, skills to master, and a lot more people than Dick to impress. There’s Batman, there’s Monarch (not in the same way as Wanda), there’s the rest of the Justice League, there’s the world, there’s Tony.

Okay, examine that. Do I have a crush on Tony? I’ve met him exactly  once , so no, I don’t think so. He’s also cute, in a “yes I did just get out of bed, but I’m still smarter than you” way, but I know zero things about him besides “Lex Luthor’s son” and “really, really smart” and “possible ego balloon”. So no, no crush on Tony.

Let’s figure out how we’re gonna balance this chapter. We’ve got:

  * School
    * Classes
    * Homework
  * Family
  * Team
    * Training
    * Patrol
  * Isobel
    * this would normally be labeled Friends, but considering Charles is missing and the rest of my friends are on the team, Isobel’s the only one that I have to make time for



For school, I’m smart enough to speedrun homework without costing me points. I do that normally. Classes, I’ve got good rapport with most of my teachers for being respectful, polite, and smart so if things come up, I have a possibility for talking out wiggle room there. 

Family’s gonna be harder, since Aaron and I are currently grounded. Kung-Fu club excuse might work, run that by Dick and see if that’s plausible and if he’s willing to miss Kung-Fu club. No, wait, that excuse won’t work: Mom can double check that and if we get caught, it’ll be awful. Mom already thinks that Aaron might be on drugs (he’s not, for the record. The idea that Aaron is using drugs is possibly Mom using Occam’s razor), let’s not have her think that we’re part of a gang.

With the Team, we’re going to have to figure out how to work as a unit. It won’t happen immediately, or even in the time frame Wanda’s hoping (though her hoping definitely won’t  hurt ). 

Wanda had a good framework to work with, probably one based off of the Justice League from a surface level examination of what all of them brings to their team. Dick’s used to working with the Bat, which might prove a hiccup since he could be so used to working with someone on the Bat’s level that he might go too fast for the rest of us. I’m used to working with Aaron, but I think I need to stop letting him spook me (Exhibit A: the Entity Incident. I’d still be able to go visit Them if I hadn’t just bowled over for Aaron’s grumpiness). Avery’s a little harder, but makes effort to work and connect with others so at least has a natural instinct of at least meeting people halfway. Wanda’s a wildcard, but definitely has a desire to work with others so that’s a good foundation. Aaron’s used to teamwork, being on a football team and whatnot, so he might be able to connect better with others. I’ll have to step up to keep up with Dick and Aaron on that front and to give Wanda an example.

Once we all have a baseline training, something to make us more competent in the field, we can think about Combo Moves. Honestly, if I can get away with my costume having claws, having Wanda throw me at people would be borderline hysterical. “Wet Hissing Cat Maneuver”. Hmmm. Workshop that name.

I’m honestly not super into the Agents of H.A.R.M. idea for team names, for the record. I think we need something shorter, catchier. Besides, Agents suggests a government body and I’m not cool with that. Maybe Gotham Guard or Titans or Night Knights.

Now, Isobel. That’s gonna be hard. She’s caught up in the cool aspect of being superpowered and doesn’t get that this is dangerous. However, I think she’ll want an in somehow. So, idea to run past Dick for validity: see if she won’t cover for me in classes. I’ll need to keep up with schoolwork. Charles’s disappearance might help here: I won’t have to lie that I’m not missing Charles. It’s an open secret that Charles and I were a unit and now he’s gone. All of the teachers at the Academy knew us, from what I understand, so it’s a kernel of truth.

And who knows? Maybe that can be a thing that the Team does: hunt down information about this Maker guy and see if Charles is okay. I doubt the others will consider it first priority, but it’s  something . Me even proposing it is a seed being planted.


	2. 10/11/87

It’s been...a crazy couple of days.

So on 10/9/87, my family and I had our lives flipped upside down by my biological family taking large rectangles out of our house and kidnapping all four of us.

You’d think this would be the weirdest event. But no. No it was not. In no particular order:

  * My biological family has been looking for me for the last...the entirety of my lifespan. That’s up there in the tippy-top of weirdness here
  * Said bio-family? Lives on the moon. In a secret city. And are the royal family. Of said secret city. On the moon.
  * The only exception to this is Selina. Day before? She was my best candidate for mentor and someone who also learned from Sensei. Now? Apparently my biological sister. It’s a nice turn of events, the only good thing to come out of this whole thing.
  * We got rescued by Green Lantern. That was, admittedly, pretty rad.
  * Less rad: Aaron flipping off the moon. Let me have my favorite astral body in peace, Aaron. If you’re reading this, Aaron, stop.



Selina is letting us stay with her. She’s awesome that way. I think she’s doing it for me more than the others, but hey. Still awesome. We’re not homeless or living in a hotel. She was looking out for me more than I’d expect her to: took a taser punch for me from a guard while we were trying to escape.

The second weird topic unrelated to my moon family is Tony found us. In Selina’s house. Today. Using modified radar waves to, presumably, track Flynn. Lovelace help me, that boy...

He showed up at 8 AM, charmed Mom into letting him in, and the interaction from there went...wonky. He got distracted by Selina’s antique car, fixed it up. I won’t lie to myself, not here, it was highly attractive  and frightening to watch him take the car apart and put it back together. My whole  spine felt like it was electrified. Aspasia’s patience, that’s not how spines  work but it’s the closest I can figure to describing the feeling. I had to keep from smiling too big when he came out covered in motor oil. It was cute in the same way that Heathcliff (yes. Named for  that Heathcliff) gets when he steals one of Aaron’s socks. Aaron screwed with me a little, calling me “Royal Highness” in front of Tony. Which now has resulted in him calling me “Princess”.

Imagine me clapping my hands together to preface this next sentence. I’m not gonna lie: that nickname is the  worst considering the context that it technically  does apply to me, apparently.

So I took out that spark of annoyance by spraying Tony in the face with a hose. What? I wasn’t gonna let him track motor oil around the mansion, no matter how cute it might’ve been! If I was rich and it was my own mansion, that’d be one thing. Mm. No. I wouldn’t let him track motor oil around my own mansion either.

Then he fiddled with Flynn, since that’s what he was actually there for. Busted his portable rigs a few times, but he got the readings he was there for. Then he did the strangest thing and said I’d flirted with him.

Let’s be clear: I don’t flirt. Never have, don’t think I ever will. I don’t have time for that. I’m sarcastic and mess with people or tell them the truth that they  are cute. But the act of flirting is foreign and not something I have time for. Yes, I called what Tony did amazing, brilliant, and fascinating and teased him for his use of “interesting”, but it’s not flirting. I don’t have a crush on Tony. And if I  did , he’s not interested. He finds Flynn interesting, not me. He’s made that abundantly clear.

I’ll be seeing him again on the 17th. I will make an  effort not to say anything that could be construed as flirting. Flirting means romance. Romance means letting all of me be seen. I’m not going to do that. What if when this hypothetical guy (any of the guys Aaron’s teased me about) sees me and doesn’t like what he sees? What if he sees me and  runs ? What happens then? If when he gets to know me, he’s only disappointed? What if I give myself away only to be passed back?

I’ve had too much of that. So, no. No romance. Call me defensive, it’s not true. I’m being cautious: eyes wide open. I can’t risk reckless dating due to my miscalculating.

Mmm. That’s kinda catchy when sung. “I can’t risk reckless dating due to my miscalculating.” Good mnemonic device.


	3. 10/12/87

So Selina is Catwoman. No person who has this many cats—seven—and this sketchy of an income can be anyone else.

With our lives, I...I honestly can’t blame her. Before knowing the moon bullshit I would’ve, but now...now it’s a better than she could’ve ended up. Snobby princess, unhappy on the moon. This fits for her. Could she be using her skills to save people? Possibly. But it’s her choice: she earned it after surviving our dad and the bullshit that’s on the moon.


	4. 10/13/87

I thought that maybe one of the team might get it. Why I choose cat, why things are how they are with me. But after some groaning and teasing, I don’t think they get it. They see surface level, the puns, the rolling r’s, but nobody’s asked me for deeper.

Mm. I guess that’s fitting. Nobody knows where cats come from. Look into a cat’s eyes: they’re not talking. So maybe I shouldn’t either.

Who am I kidding. I’m  dying to talk the philosophy of it. But it’s not something I’d talk about with anyone. Selina might’ve gone to Sensei too, but I’m not gonna push my luck. She’s been generous in giving me and Aaron and Mom a home for the moment. Asking for a philosophical discussion might be pushing the tentative sisterly generosity.

Charles would be perfect for this. He knew about the reasoning with owl. He found it strange, but once I described it as a prism, a focus for my energy, I think it made sense. That or he was humoring me. Could’ve been both honestly. I miss Charles. I want to tell him all about everything that’s been happening. I need his style of sensibility. Dick’s is fine, fun even, but Dick isn’t Charles. Wanda is amazing, lovely, but she can’t replace my rock. Ironic since she is a rock.

I think the main reason why I want to explain it to someone is because I want to be known. For someone to  get me. For someone to see me like Charles saw me or how Sensei knew me.

I think Sensei was the first person outside of Charles to explicitly tell me that it was fine for me to be me. He dressed it up in the rhetoric of animals because most people go “animals are sweet entities and amazing and wonderful”. It’s a strategy to be less self-hate-y: would I say the things that I do about myself to a cat or an owl? No. And I think Sensei knew that, hence all the focus on “you are owl”.

Putting Aaron as tiger was pretty genius, honestly. It gives such a  large  distinction between Aaron and I (tiger and owl) and that’s what I needed. Sensei saw that, saw me underneath all of my “I’m not as good as Aaron, but I will give myself so many paper cuts to prove that I’m good at something” behavior.

It was something of a running pattern, with the Hamiltons, to compare Aaron and I. I don’t think it was ever, with Mom at least, a malicious thing. With Mom it was “see, honey, Aaron ate this vegetable, it’s fine” or “we’re okay, I know you had a nightmare, but look! Aaron’s still asleep and fine, we’re all fine”. With ~~Father~~ Henry, it was “You doing okay, kiddo? Aaron outpaced you a lot during family tag” or “Aaron did a bit better than you at Monopoly, are you feeling sick?”

Damn. It. Had he been using  Monopoly to train me as a puppet princess dictator for the moon people? Tried to inspire in me the same hatred that my father had for my uncle in my relationship to Aaron? Laura Annie Wilson, I think this is the first time I’m  happy to have hypothetically disappointed him.

The Aaron thing on its own, I think, would’ve been fine. But given the other foster families I had  before the Hamiltons, I think I’m a little broken from it all.

Foster Family 1: was baby, do not remember. Official reports and Foster Family 2 say that they gave me up for being too loud and high maintenance. They lived in Metropolis, I think

Foster Family 2: was toddler by the end of my stay in LA. I don’t personally remember much now, but I did keep notes from then. And by notes I mean toddler drawings. Most of them are white pages scribbled black with a gold circle-ish shape in them somewhere. Given that I didn’t see the moon until age 4, I’m pretty sure I was drawing the ceiling light in my “room” (a small 4-by-4 walk in closet that I was locked into frequently because I was apparently too “grabby”)

Foster Family 3: oh, that year in Chicago. That I do remember personally. The “family” that was hosting foster kids to cover their illegal activities. If it wasn’t for Charlotte, one of the older girls, exposing them to the police, I’d still be there being screamed at for “not having a pretty smile” and “being clingy”

Thrown this way and that throughout the entire country, only to end up back in Gotham where I’d been originally left. If I was more poetic, I’d wax about Gotham being the only city to  want me living in it. Being pushed out over and over, unwanted again and again and again. Doesn’t do great things for a person. And Sensei  saw that and I’m pretty sure that it  was what caused him to help me the way that he did.

Every “meow”, every “purrrfect”, every bad cat pun, every “who”, every bad owl pun: it’s me reminding myself that it’s  okay to be me. I’m not anyone else and that’s perfectly fine. I’m not Aaron and that’s fine. I’m not Charles and that’s fine. I’m not Dick and that’s fine. I’m not Wanda and that’s fine. I’m not Selina and that’s fine. I’m not the pawn that Henry may have wanted and that’s GREAT. I’m not “interesting” enough for Anthony Luthor-Stark and that’s GREAT. I’m probably not the perfect niece my uncle and aunt wanted and that’s GREAT. I’m who I WANT. In the hypothetical where nobody else wants me, I’ll still want me.

Me, moi,  MEOW.

Over the top, but you know what? I think I’ve earned the right to a little dramatics in my own journal.


	5. 10/14/87

I was so speechless today that it might’ve been a little rude. Need to make up for that with hugs.

Wanda threw me a surprise birthday party. Got the whole team in on it, kind of (she told everyone it was an emergency. I thought our base had been compromised and was ready for a brawl to get our equipment back. Lovelace help me, I am  not losing that lab). Dick was, for a solid 10-15 minutes, flabbergasted. Almost as flabbergasted as I was. Made a lot of venting noises, like a tea kettle going off. Honestly, his reaction is what kept me from full out crying because it was just so grounded. Or, rather, I felt like I had to ground myself for him. This took us both off balance and I tend to naturally fill the space to try to help others balance.

After Dick recovered from the misleading and the breach of informational security (Wanda brought her friend, Kara, along for the party. Kara’s sweet, by the way), it was easier for me to go with the flow. I do this every year: get emotional and offset by my own damn birthday. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, with having had 9 birthday parties with the Hamiltons, but it still gets me every single time. Blows me away every time people make time to celebrate that I’m  alive . I’ll be even more in shock when people get me  presents on top of that because I don’t think I’ve ever felt like I’ve earned them. Gift horse, mouth, don’t look, I know, I know.

Aaron got me that trench coat I’ve been wanting. It’s good timing, with my jean jacket being firmly gone now. This is new armor for every day.

Dick, despite being caught off guard by the party, managed to get me something that almost made me cry (in a good way! I have to stress that). A batarang. Almost  just like the one that freed me from Poison Ivy’s plant monster. It’s holding the award for “sweetest accidental present ever of all time”.

Avery got me a book. It was surprisingly astute choice, because if you had told me a week ago that Avery was getting me a book for my birthday, I would’ve assumed it’d be something along the lines of that time I went to that open lecture from Gotham University a year ago (I was bursting with excitement about it, so much so that poor Avery had to deal with me rambling about mushfaking and the ingenuity of improvised prison engineering since Aaron had dumped me on Avery after picking me up the lecture and  ran ). But it was a series of letters between IK Brunel and Ada Lovelace. Skimming the first one, it’s akin to some of the letters I’ve read between Lovelace and Babbage (which I think I’ve mentioned once as an offhand comment to Avery), though not as academically charged.

Kara got me something I’m dubbing a Kryptonian multitool. It’s a crystal, about the size of a pen, that can change into any tool I can imagine. It is probably very, very precious, so I won’t be having it in my utility belt. It will, for now, be going in my locker at the base with the batarang.

Now, it should be absolutely zero surprise to anyone that Wanda was overachieving. I did the same thing to Charles at the first of his birthday parties I ever went to. Wanda got me not one, not two, but three presents. Three’s a magic number and Wanda’s definitely magic, so that fits. She got me this adorable cat-owl gryphon plushie: a mix between a barn owl and a white Somali, if the tail and feet are any indication. Its name is Archimedes now, since I almost took that as my superhero name and it felt very fitting. Then she got me a top-of-the-line Wayne tech computer! It’s stationary, but that’s definitely for the better since portable would mean less ability to do  anything with it. Then she got me a hat. A hat which, improbably, matches the trench coat Aaron got me. They definitely didn’t team up on gifts, so I’m gonna assume it was Wanda’s “ Effect ” going on.

It was a surprisingly fun party, despite the fact that I only feel super comfortable around two of the people in attendance. Though there’s one (1) thing that Wanda said that’s wiggling around in my head like a stubborn cat.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be romantic to be swept off your feet by a mad scientist?” Like. Journal, we both know she’s referring to Monarch. But that question made me flash back to something Tony said three days prior: “If I ever become a supervillain, I’ll come for Flynn” or something similar. So me, being the ever brilliant, ever  wise Adalynn Knight, asked at one point in this conversation, “What type of mad scientist? The kind that looks cute covered in motor oil or the kind that’s out to destroy the world?”

Stupid. Stupid is what that question was. Because Aaron Hamilton, in all of his stupid glory, was sitting right there. In the same conversation. Who knew  exactly who my Freudian slip was about. Writing this now, I want to just disappear. Vanish. Bye bye.

He’s gonna hold that over me forever. Forever and a day. No. No. Forever and a  year . And he’s gonna use it on the 17th. I  know it.

Breathe, Ada. Cats are poise. Grace. Elegance. Aaron does anything related to Tony, what can we do? What would be something that’d be anywhere remotely equivalent?

Oh. Oh, that’s good. Operation: Tiger in the Rose Bush. No, wait, shit, we are NOT calling it that. Operation: Tyger. Yeah. Yeah. He implies anything with Tony this Saturday or after, I will imply to Rose that Aaron’s got a crush on her. Make it somewhat saucy: one-sided pinning because oh, he doesn’t think he has a chance with her, she’s so pretty and has so many options, why would she ever carry the same torch?

We will perch on patient feet. Tiger may think he’s got an ace, but mwahahahaha, he’s got  nothing on Sparkles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose/Sparkles is another OC, a backstory OC for Aaron (who is a PC played by my boyfriend). I don't think I've mentioned this thus far, but Avery is another PC played by another friend.


	6. 10/15/87

This is a phenomena not recorded yet in this journal, but I know this bitch. This Mirror Bitch.

How to put this in a way that doesn’t sound crazy. I mean, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not totally sane: I’m willing to put on a costume and fight crime, that is not the course of action from a sane person and I acknowledge this.

So, Mirror Bitch. Mirror Bitch is a way for me to distance myself from my super anxious and self deprecating thoughts. I’ll brush my teeth or hair and I’ll have a little mental debate with the bitch in the mirror. She’s always so  smug. “You shouldn’t have had those brownies, look at your hips”, “I told you the skirt was a good idea, but do you listen to me? Nooooo”, “You said what? Ada that’s so stupid”, etc. The point is to every time tell myself what she’s saying is garbage. She’s the Mirror Bitch, she’s got nothing on me despite how personal she can get.

It might sound like a Sisyphean task, doing this every day, but I get rewards for this behavior. Every time I win at something, I get to lord it over her. She’s the only person I’ll lord stuff over because she’s the only one that deserves it.


	7. 10/16/87

That first patrol. That first patrol was  amazing . I’ve never felt more  alive .

It wasn’t because I was doing good. It wasn’t because that stopping Firefly was the morally correct option. It was because I  helped . Me, my skills, my knowledge! When I was finally alone after that night, I locked myself away in my room until dinner and just let my hands  shake from the sheer  joy of it all!

It was  my grapnel shot that caught Firefly and slowed his descent. I can’t take full credit for the takedown, but I played a  big role! I even managed a second shot to get me to a nice vantage point, in case he tried to leg it away! I did okay with the press!

I will admit I wasn’t the  best with the press, but honestly, nobody gave me prepped answers. The next time we’re all tactics, I’m bringing that up. But you know? I made a purrrrfect reveal of myself to the press.

The others  still don’t get the cat thing. But you know what? That’s fine! Nobody’s  asked and thus, I’ll be as quiet as cat’s feet.

If Tony hadn’t figured out that feature with the marker, that let me have the predictive tech with Flynn, I don’t think I would’ve been able to  do what I did tonight. It was my hands, my skills, but Flynn and Tony helped me  see . And Tony, at least, I can owe a favor to for that.

Even if he is a bit of an arrogant dick, he’s an arrogant dick that gave me an  edge to my claws. One good turn deserves another, I think.


	8. 10/17/87

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Ada doesn't outright say it, the major event she's reacting to in this entry is her and the party almost getting ganked by a Kree Accuser. This is the _second_ time they've almost been ganked by a Kree Accuser, at this point in the timeline.

So. Not  quite the same kind of rush as yesterday. Different kind. Letting myself be seen, just a bit, by Mom, is a good feeling. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” What anyone should do! Help! If that thing hadn’t teleported away, we could’ve taken it down, make sure that that individual didn’t hunt us down again. Gotten information, something. 

We can’t sit back and let things affect us. Not anymore. The world tries to back us into a corner? I, for one, will yowl, hiss, and claw right the hell back.

I’d like to note, for record’s sake more than anything else, I did my best to get Tony to safety as best as I could. Get him to his dad, hope they’ve got the sense to leave, best I could do. Then when they didn’t  leave , I had to get creative and get a couple birds with one stone.

Mirror Bitch is gonna have  words about the MC Hammer line, but I thought it was clever. Not the pinnacle of humor and insults, but it was  enough . Couldn’t do cat related stuff, didn’t have the suit for that, but it got that asshole’s attention and that’s all I wanted.

  * Get their eyes off Batman. For he will do, as he do do, and that alien got to learn that there’s no doing anything about it! Taser knuckles, how cool is that?
  * Isolate me from the other civvies. Buy them time to run, if they’re smart. Any good predator will pick off an obvious weak point and I was presenting myself as one. Which feeds into:
  * Keep eyes off of Aaron and Avery. They’re the two who’ve got better abilities than me for that kind of threat. Keep them standing and doing guerilla tactics.



Mom was kind of mad, but y’know what? This is literally all I’ve wanted to ever do in my life. Make a difference. Help people. And I  did that today. Was it with the same kind of panache as yesterday? Nope. But the butterfly effect is a thing. Help in a small way, maybe it’ll turn into a big way.

That’s what you taught me, Mom.


	9. 10/18/87

Today I’ve just put aside for quiet time. Homework first, that’s done. I’m going to alternate between looking over this magic stuff and the dictionary that Grace gave me for my birthday.

So, dear reader, if someone is by chance reading this, welcome to the start of triple encryption: double book coding and spattered Attilanian. Because, specifically, if someone besides me is reading this, you’re the  worst.


	10. 10/20/87

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aunt and uncle mentioned here is Medusa and Blackbolt. Ada's kind of, sort of Attilanian royalty.

Reading this dictionary’s got my emotions over the place. I picked it up because having a language nobody else on Earth has easy access to is handy. I didn’t expect to have  emotions about it. And thus, this journal entry.

Did I make the right decision, running away from my uncle and aunt? Yes, there’s a huge, literally spacial amount of distance in terms of culture shock, but they did seem to care. On some strange, deeply disconnected level. They did send a small military unit to bring me back, maybe because they were scared that I was being hurt or held against my will. I don’t know how they found me, so it’s possible they had no idea that I was, on some level, happy and oblivious. Maybe I was too harsh with them. I’m giving Selina a chance, despite the fact that a month ago I would’ve been livid at the idea of her using her skills to steal from others. Maybe, if I have a second chance to speak with my uncle and/or aunt, I should give them a chance too.

But I should establish some rules for that engagement, with myself, before I even consider going further.

  1. They will not remove me from my life. I have friends, I have a position I’m happy in, and family or no, I will not let them take that from me.
  2. We need to establish some middle ground, culturally speaking. I’m not super into the idea of being called barbaric to my face or even behind my back. They want this family thing to work? We need a good level of respect happening.
  3. No making me more special than I am. I am just Adalynn Knight. I get that having any familial relationship to my Moon Family makes me royal. I am not, however, an ambassador. I am their niece. I do not speak for them to the US government and I do not speak for the US government to them. I am 16, they are adults, they should have actual diplomats for this. Not teenage nieces, but actually trained diplomats who know how to do political stuff. Even if this re-connection happens at a later date, when I’m more of an adult, I still probably will not be a trained diplomat because I am not about that life. Diplomat is dove, dog, any other amount of social animals that I’m strictly not.



Cats and owls? Solitary animals, to an extent. Cats’ll team up, have little groups, but by no means do they have the right temperament for that. Owls? Too haunted and definitely too solitary.

Mm. I wonder if there’s an Attilianian word for cat or owl. Would I even begin to be able to explain that to my uncle?

Let’s find out.


	11. 10/22/87

Magic is fun, in a strange way. I never thought it’d be this interesting. I just thought it was a way to wave your problems away if you were like a *Chosen One*. But it’s just like any other field of study: you just practice and learn until you know what you’re about.

Also it’s nice to be able to make little floaty lights. It amused Chessie for the couple minutes I could keep it going, trying to pounce on the light to get it.

Though, speaking of Chessie, random and probably irrelevant to anything question: did Selina get Chessie because Chessie, in her cat-like way, looks like me? Black hair, black fur, blue eyes, thin, kinda light. And I think, keyword think, she’s named after that really old mascot cat for a railway. Don’t know which one, not gonna look into it because I’m never gonna ask. But...but it’d be sweet if it were true. If it’s not and it’s a total coincidence, then hey, that’s a neat coincidence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A list and description of all of Selina's cats:  
> 1\. Tug: black cat, noticeable feature is a scar across his hip and bright yellow eyes. Named for TS Elliot's "Rum Tum Tugger" (which is a poem about a cat and also a character from the Musical "Cats"). Is picky and the type of cat to always be on the wrong side of every door  
> 2\. Colette: Chartreux cat, dark grey with big yellow eyes. Named after the author of La Chatte  
> 3\. Heathcliff: orange tabby  
> 4\. Chessie: small black cat with blue eyes. Named after the mascot of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Is small, quiet, and will cuddle anyone. Is the one that, without fail, Ada finds asleep on her head every morning since coming to Selina's mansion  
> 5\. C'mell: a ruddy silver Persian (ruddy silver meaning dark red-brown in cat breeder language, think European fox fur color). A very polite cat. Named for the uplifted cat heroine of "Apha Ralpha Boulevard" and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mel"  
> 6\. Twitchit: a ruddy silver Somali missing a paw (back right paw). Also responds to "Yardstick" (has 3 feet). Named for Tabitha Twitchit from "The Tale of Tom Kitten" by Beatrix Potter  
> 7\. Sebastian: all black except for feet, ear tips, muzzle, and belly which are white. Named for the cat mascot from "Josie and the Pussycats"


	12. 11/4/87

So, I’ve always hated Halloween. My first Halloween, the first I can remember, was spent with the Golinos in Chicago and that was mostly them having us dress up as animals (I think I was dressed in an ill-fitting elephant costume) and have us distract targets as tricker-treaters as they stole things from other rooms in their shops. The next was the same. My third Halloween was with the Hamiltons and in Gotham.

Gotham Halloweens aren’t fun. Someone will always, always pull something. My third Halloween, a minor gang fight broke out in our neighborhood and we had to hide. I could hear Mom have a nervous breakdown as Henry made various whispered phone calls. The fourth and fifth and sixth were all similar in quality: someone would always do  something . It could be as petty as Vicky Renald stealing the prop sword from my “Queen Arthuriana” costume or as dangerous as...well...

The Ivy Incident happened on Halloween too. That  definitely did not warm me to the holiday.

This year, however, apparently decided that it had to top the chart of “Worst Gotham Halloweens” by being the worst recorded domestic tragedy the United States has ever seen.

The lineup? A mind-controlled Joker leading a group of 9 more Gothamite villains in a total takeover of the city. Some of these heavy hitters being: Scarecrow with a Yellow Lantern ring, a mutant army made from Aaron and Rose’s blood, Mr. Freeze, Anarky, and, because of course look at my luck,  Poison Ivy .

They all had their little territories and that just wouldn’t do. So I teamed up with my friends and Batman and we took those assholes on.

I made sure to stay as far away from Poison Ivy as I could. I’ve got friends, I’ve got backup, I’ve got gear, but I am nowhere ready to fight her again. I’d have to be fully owl for that, not owl masquerading as cat. I can only thrive when I’m allowed to be what I am and I think what I’ve learned these last couple weeks is that I’m not, naturally, cat. I can do some of the mindset, but at the end of the day, I’m not purrrrfect at it. I’m  trying to do the playfulness, the banter, the quipping, but Dick, the most birdy bird to ever  bird , can out-quip and banter me, who’s supposed to be  cat . According to Selina, Dick can’t lead his way out of a box and is a birdbrain. What does that make me? The birdy-er brain?

Overthinking it. I had a year and a half to get used to the idea of owl. I’ve only been cat for a few weeks. No use beating myself up when there’s room for impurrrrovement on the matter. HA! Oh that’s good, I’m saving that.

Anyway, I kept away from Ivy. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go into depth with it beyond a throwaway “Yeah if we go across those plants, I’m gonna have a PTSD meltdown” at one point. Might be asked about it later. Cross that bridge when I get to it, no use overthinking that  now .

Truthfully, I purrsonally only faced three villains: Anarky, Scarecrow, and the previously mentioned mind-controlled Joker.

Anarky’s a chicken. Not in the coward sense, but in the actual factual “how chickens behave” sense. He’s dangerous in a way people don’t expect, but honestly very much should. Chickens are dangerous because they have poor impulse control, poor ability at reading a room, and sharp talons. Anarky’s the same, but replace the talons with explosives. We didn’t nab him, but the data we collected on his operations was helpful in taking him down.

Scarecrow was supposed to be easy: take out the fear toxin emitter and that should’ve left him a normal dude in an overrated Halloween costume. That’s what we (Aaron, Dick, and I—Avery was on strict bed rest and Wanda was going to get a check up for her sickness thing) thought going in. Then he turned out to have a yellow version of the ring I’ve seen on Green Lantern. Thankfully, he was shitty with it: made cliche light constructs. He was easy to dodge and goad, though Aaron did get pretty beat up from his “two hellbats” routine. We tricked him into using up a lot of his ring charge (best term I’ve got: I’m assuming they function off of a battery of some kind because most tech does. Flynn’s battery is probably running off of my own thoughts or just energy from my nutritional outtake. This thing probably had an external battery: it’s too small to contain a battery for something that powerful), then we had to deal with the ring freaking out as we tried to take it off. All in all, it had to be purrrretty embarrassing for him: what’s he supposed to say, that he was taken out by 3/5ths of a team of teenage superheroes? The same team who is “blackmailing the Justice League with our incompetence”? That’s  gotta sting.

Will say, it was  weird watching Aaron in his old schoolyard bully routine. No, no that’s not exactly the right way to put it, but it’s the closest I’m gonna get with the state I’m in. Aaron never picked on anyone weaker or those typically ostracized. Aaron, in true Aaron fashion, picked on the kind of people who were  actual bullies. Must be why he was so effective against Scarecrow: it was  exactly his kind of fight.

Unlike Firefly, taking down Scarecrow didn’t feel the same kind of good. Yeah, victory always feels good, but it wasn’t the same kind as the Firefly takedown. Might be because I was using Aaron’s skill rather than my own. Making fun of people isn’t my style and it felt...kind of bad to take apart this guy’s identity like that. I know what it feels like for others to ridicule your focus, for them to not  get it . He’s undeniably an asshole, make no mistake of that, he deserves to be in jail, but...it felt wrong.

Should I fight with underhanded tactics like that? Does it make me any better than the person I’m fighting?

Hmm. Let’s run that through with a cat’s perspective. When up against an opponent, what tactics does a cat use? They use their speed and stealth. Does stealth mean an underhanded tactic as well as not being seen? Let’s put this hypothetical cat against something bigger than it. More dangerous. Let’s make Scarecrow a bull for this. How would a cat fight a bull, if it didn’t have the option to run?

The cat’s not concerned with moral high ground (because it’s a cat and blissfully unconcerned with philosophy) and maybe I shouldn’t be either. There’s lines I won’t cross, because I’m not truly cat, I’m a human being, but when it comes to dirty tactics like using Scarecrow’s own ego against him, I think that should be the case. If I keep myself to a pure moral high ground, then an opponent might take advantage of that. A little grey, like a very light shade, should be fine. If it reaches the cat’s and my own goal of survival, I think a little ridicule and dirty fighting is good for me. I’m not out to make friends with the Scarecrow: I’m out to survive his nonsense and to put him in jail.

Finally, the Joker encounter. Batman and Compatriot were gonna go at him, but Dick argued after Scarecrow, the “don’t want to get children around that kind of danger” logic wasn’t gonna fly. Batman let those of us who weren’t on bedrest (Aaron was added to that roster, along with White Hood) volunteer if we wanted to come. As much as the idea of leaving Aaron behind terrified me (every time we’re split up, something bad happens. Always. And I guess the pattern holds true), I had to go. Aaron couldn’t get his revenge by beating the Joker, but I could. I’ve been out for Joker since he first popped up and then he made it purrrsonal by kidnapping my big brother and taking his blood. Besides, Dick was going. He is my friend  and teammate and that means I’m gonna look out for him too, especially so when he goes on a volunteer mission into the heart of this Ha-Ha-Halloween  nonsense . Yes, Batgirl was going too, but I didn’t want to leave it up to chance. If something had happened on that mission and I let my own fear keep me from it, I would’ve blamed myself. By going, I was purrrforming a purrrrreemptive strike on that bullshit. Aaron was in the safest place in Gotham and I was going on a mission with some of Gotham’s best on my side. I felt like we were gonna be fine and I ended up being half right.

From the get-go, I could tell Joker had some modifications done. So much of him just wasn’t...normal human. Not at all. The big, obvious thing that wasn’t right was a dense piece of  something at the base of his skull. I focused on that, thinking it was like a computer of sorts that was running the mods in his body so I tried tazing it and it fried the circuitry. Then he said something about a control chip and the pieces started to roll together: Joker was never truly in charge of this whole thing. That’s why none of this fit his M.O. It was  someone else’s M.O. entirely. We took out the mutants, Batman took Joker somewhere, and Dick and I started on our way back to base.

It should’ve been easy. There was a war on between mutants and the new 15 foot tall, flying Jack-o-Lantern-faced robots. They should’ve been too focused on each other to really be a threat to us, us who were sneaking.

But then a pack of mutants attacked us. We smoke bombed and ran. Dick came up with the idea to lead them to a pack of robots and I agreed. I have to stress that: I agreed to the plan. Dick didn’t manhandle me into the situation, I was fully conscious of the decision and I agreed to it. We almost pulled it off too. But I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t sneaky enough. It was  my fault I got spotted, not Dick’s, not Wanda’s, not Aaron’s, not Avery’s, not Batman’s, not Grace’s,  mine . I list my teammates because I can tell that they all blame themselves, in some manner (well, as much as I can tell  any of what Avery’s feeling, anyway), for me now missing my left eye. I list Batman and Grace because they’re adults: adults will always, always, always find a way to blame themselves if a kid gets hurt “on their watch”.

Hm. What would any of them say if I blamed myself for it? Aaron’s easiest to guess: all spitfire covering up real fear, hissing and growling and snarling. The F word would feature heavily. Wanda’s also easy to guess: she’d disagree with that, I think. I can’t say how or why, but that’s the sentiment I’d guess she’d have if I said the words “I blame myself for the loss of my eye”. Dick...Dick’s kind of easy to guess. I think he’d blame himself wholesale, say it was his bad plan and thus, his fault. Might do a lot of verbal acrobatics out of being the shot-caller of the team.

Mmmm. That makes me pretty angry. It’s not his fault. If I’m right, he’d argue that it was. I could see us arguing about it a lot, honestly. But, looking at this hypothetical situation from the outside, like it already happened and this is hindsight, we’d both be wrong. It’s not my fault and it’s not his fault: it’s the stupid robot’s fault. And even then, it’s not entirely the robot’s fault. It’s Ivy and the plants all over again. It wasn’t the plants’ fault for almost eating me: Ivy  made the plants do that. And something  made the robot attack me. And whatever that something was, that’s what’s guilty of me losing my eye. Whoever wrote the programming, specifically the targeting programming, is the person responsible.

Responsible for this pain. The eye always hurts. The only time it doesn’t is when I’m doped up on painkillers. And at that level of thinking, of functioning, it’s not even worth being awake.

This has to be fixed. I can’t live like this. I can’t. This isn’t a life: this is a fucking joke. A horrible, awful, ridiculous joke that only one person’s laughing at and it’s some sadistic, cruel, mercurial asshole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Jack'o'Lantern robots Ada mentions are Ultron Sentinels. Because Lili is crazy enough to mix X-men Sentinels with Ultron.


	13. 11/7/87

So much happened in the span of like a  single day. That’s my life: a series of quick things happening all in the span of a single day.

First order of business: I have two functional eyes again. The left eye is now just Flynn. He’s my black and red, lightly spooky left eye now. Thank you, Wanda, for the craftsmanship there. It was touch and go, I tasted cheese for a lot of it and I saw the fascinating image of a face that was half Grace, half cinnamon roll, but overall it worked. I’m no longer in pain and two functioning eyes! I kinda wish it wasn’t red (red washes me out, I’m too pale for red), but you know, beggars for eyes cannot be choosers! Just, y’know...it would’ve been neat if it was yellow. Black and yellow, like a  cat’s eye ?

No, I don’t think that was that funny. The moment I wrote it out, the joke fell flat. I just  can’t win with the playfulness of cat, can I? Maybe that’s why Sensei labeled me owl to begin with: he sensed I’d be bad at quipping and jokes. Give off an aura of it, with how bad I am, and he was so in tune with everything that he just  sensed it. No. No that’s ridiculous and just me self deprecating. I’m just...bad on the spot with that stuff. It’s something to work on.

Back on the topic at hand, I don’t think I’m going to try anything like the eye thing again anytime soon. Trusting Wanda is important, but it’d be more respectful to her once she has more practice under her belt. By letting her do that, I opened her up to getting hurt via the very likely mistakes she could’ve made. If she had hurt me or messed up, she would’ve been (by my guesstimate) pretty sad. Because I could’ve been dead or worse. So if I lose an arm or something in the next month (which is looking more likely all the time, considering that I never thought I’d lose my  eye in the first place, but that’s life: an endless series of surprises, both good and bad), I’ll just hold off on having Wanda heal me for that.

Speaking of people who feel bad in response to my eye, I need to have a  talk with Dick.


	14. 11/8/87

So, lesson learned: when in doubt of how to handle someone, throw another, more competent person at them. Not literally. Wait. Maybe literally? In this case, not literally.

Mom found out about Cat’s Eye. She wasn’t happy, Aaron wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy. I screwed up everyone’s happiness because I was too impatient to have an eye back and I know it. Everyone knows it. Even Selina knows it and felt pity enough for me to get me hot milk to help calm me down! It takes a big screw-up to get Selina to care! I’m a big screw-up.

If it wasn’t for Grace talking me down and smoothing things over with Mom, I’d probably be making more screw-ups. I was all set to run away, live on my own, do the vigilante thing alone, but Grace has a point: I don’t have to give up my family to keep training.

Yes, it’s not actively productive, like taking down Firefly or helping out during Halloween. But it’s prep. Like sharpening claws before a hunt.

Besides, I’m still not sure about...well, Flynn’s everything right now. I don’t know what the chaos magic has done to him at all and I shouldn’t risk that without a professional on hand. And with Tony missing, I just...haven’t been brave enough to poke on my own. With whatever Grace is planning, I won’t be alone.

So I’ll train. I’ll get skills and then I’ll hunt.


	15. 11/11/87

So, Dick. I won’t get into the logistics of how I talked Mom into letting me out, but I figure since I’m going into retirement and purrrrrobably not going to see him any time soon, I needed to talk to him.

I found him brooding a little ways away from Wayne Manor, just sort of...sitting out there? He had a whole gymnastics  thing out there and I’m not even gonna get into the logistics of figuring out how he got anybody to put that there. He was doing the cool gymnastics stuff, flipping about, when I got there. Probably thinking, maybe needed somewhere to do that that wasn’t...y’know, the big guy’s. Maybe I’m projecting there, because I used to have to do that too: get out of Henry’s space and just...think.

After approaching him, getting him to talk wasn’t easy. He was kinda...grunt and brood. Behavior I’d guess from the big guy, not Dick. Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, even when the branch was grafted onto said tree and...the metaphor’s leaving me. He was avoidant, self deprecating...it was eery how much it felt like looking into my own playbook. I told him how surreal it was to have someone else running around with the very first cape name you ever would’ve taken. He was, understandably, confused. I told him I would’ve been Batgirl, given the chance back when it was more of an actual thing I would’ve done.

If he’d been a cat, you would’ve been able to see the way that his metaphorical cat ears perked up at that. 

I told him about the Ivy Incident. I told him how I felt that day, the suffocation, the sinking feeling of utter failure, the sheer powerlessness I felt. And then, Batman showed up, saved me and the day. And if I wasn’t trying not to infodump him, I would’ve...I would’ve told Dick what I’d never told anyone else before: how I had  waited for ages for Batman to show up at the hospital when I was recovering with stitches in my hip from the plants biting me, then at my house. For Batman to show up, take me under his wing, and teach me how to not be afraid anymore. I’ll admit, I made a few self deprecating jokes about my hero worship of Batman. The daydreams of being Batgirl, stuff like that.

“Batgirl,” I would have said, “was the name I would’ve taken. I wanted to be a mini-him because to me, he was strength and I wanted to be that. I don’t, anymore. I won’t be anyone’s  girl anymore. That’s why I went for Cat’s Eye and not Catgirl: I’m not Catwoman’s girl, I’m not Batman’s girl, I’m my own damn person.” I didn’t though. I...I don’t know why. It says a lot about how I feel about Dick that I was even this close to letting all of that out onto the field with him. I haven’t even thought of telling Charles all of that, if Charles were around to hear it.

But with Dick...it’s like the Firefly thing. Kind of. It’s a clicking of sorts that I don’t know how to identify.

We went back and forth for a bit. I had his attention solidly in my hands and, I gotta say, it felt good. I can admit it here: I like having conversations with Dick. That’s not a crime.

Eventually, I was able to get us back onto why I was there: gauging if he was blaming himself for me getting hit by an Ultron. We went back and forth and back and forth on that, just like I figured we would in the hospital. I didn’t break through the blame he placed on himself for that, but the wound’s still fresh for him. I laid out how I felt and hope it helps in the long run, but I can’t magically change how he feels. There...there is probably a spell for that. Yeah, actually, there is most  definitely a spell for that and I don’t want it. He’ll work through his feelings and I’ll deal with however they end up.

I have to be honest here: I tried to flirt. It was, predictably, a disaster. I honestly just shouldn’t try anymore. I mean, when has anyone actually be interested in me in a way that wasn’t just a pity joke? The good kind of flirting happens to other people. Dick’s out of my league by a mile and a half, probably knows it.

Though...we’re similar. We’ve both had that moment, a catalyst moment, that changed the whole playing field forever. I’m not talking about getting shot by the robot, that’s not a catalyst, that’s...that’s the battle. I’m talking moments that pull us into the battle, give us that kind of hurt that only Dick’s ever seemed to have a baseline understanding of. Aaron doesn’t get it, he’s in the battle for me because he’s trying to be a good big brother. He had his much later (I’d guess Halloween, for him) and doesn’t seem to be fully processing that the world’s given its declaration of war against him. Avery could have it, but I’m unsure. Wanda’s definitely had it, so has Grace. Grace is owl, haunted and vigilant. There’s no doubt there’s at least one moment that could be considered the catalyst.

But Dick’s is the only one that I’m fully aware of the details. Mine doesn’t even compare, but it’s not a contest. Hearing what his was, it made something that Sensei used to say make sense. “Strength means blessed with an enemy.” Dick’s so strong, pulling through everything with as much charm and levity as he has. And the battle just keeps  coming for him, but he just keeps pushing through. I have no doubt that if he wanted out, he’d be quietly retired to live as much of a normal life as he wanted wherever he wanted. The big guy could make that happen if Dick just said the word, I’ve no doubt about that. Yes, Dick said there’s no going back from this life, but I think that was him partially just convincing  himself of that as he was for us. I have no plans to ever leave the battle, but the way Dick talked...I think some part of him wishes there was no battle. I wish for that too, but that’s not how it works. Not right now. Maybe someday I can put down the claws and he can put down the fists and we can be normal people. Go out, see a movie. Maybe a horror movie. Could pretend to be scared to get closer to him.

It’s a nice picture, but it’s not one I get to live. He’d have to be interested in the first place for that to even happen in the hypothetical that the battle leaves us alone. Which isn’t probable.


	16. 11/14/87

I...I don’t feel right, outside of Gotham. I itch to go out and be surrounded by buildings massively taller than me, have the skies grey, feel the city’s tempo around me in an angry, sexy staccato. Here at Erik Magnus’s School for the Gifted, I’m...I’m out of rhythm. The rhythm here is a slow waltz, bum-bum-bum-bum-dadum-dadum. I don’t walk the rhythm here like I do in Gotham. The skies are always so clear and blue, it’s just...it’s kind of unsettling, if I’m going to be honest. Even when the skies are clear in Gotham, it’s never this kind of blue. It’ll be either a navy blue at night, stretched out above us like a big blanket, or a beautiful sunset warm gradient. Manchester blue is just...odd.

The other kids here...well, it’s not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario would be to be surrounded by spoiled rich kids, unaware of the battle, who’d judge me for being withdrawn and, as Dick’s pointed out, broody. It’s not that. There’s at least a group of them, the Palestinians, who’ve all had their own catalyst moment and thus have a possibility of understanding. They’re like Aaron: they haven’t fully worked through it yet, but they could work through it like me. Aaron’s getting broodier though, so maybe...maybe he’s getting it. Stopped beating himself up and maybe he’s getting mad at the right people.

I’m left well enough alone and that’s good. I can just spend the next semester missing Gotham, missing Selina, missing Chessie, missing Dick and just. Keeping to myself. I’ll train, I’ll behave, I’ll keep my head down and my claws to myself, and I’ll get out of here and back to the battle when it’s all over.

Remy’s just...a big reminder of an older, pettier, smaller battle. Me against the bullies of Gotham Academy. He’s not flirting for the same reason, it’s not flirting to harm, that’s just his way (just like how the cat will lurk, Remy will flirt), it’s just...a sting of how I messed up with Dick.


	17. 11/15/87

I have not been left alone, Koriand’r is after me and I can’t say that the attention is...unwanted. Maybe some part of me is hissy about Dick’s “loneliness and libraries” statement. What does he know? We may be similar, but we aren’t the  same and just. Ugh! Maybe I go along with Koriand’r with the specific reason of proving him wrong on that count. Who cares? What’s the point of acknowledging that?

[There is a solid quarter of the page after this covered in angry ink “scratches”, like the pen’s been dragged over the section in a way to mimic claw marks. Underneath the scribbles are the coded words for “Dick”, “Tony”, “prove them wrong” that can be pieced together. There may be exactly one (1) “FUCK” amongst the angry scribbles]


	18. 11/20/87

Ada, we’ve got to re-center ourselves. We’re retiring Cat’s Eye. Mom knows about her and thus, is a security threat.

We’re owl and cat. We know what being owl is, but let’s take the time to establish cat.

Be the Cat. In mind and body, become the cat. Embrace stealth and speed while operating with poise, playfulness, and wit.

Perch on Patient Feet. Watch everyone, prey and predator, around you. When and if you strike, make sure you know what you’re doing.

Striking Upwards. When fighting those vastly out of your league, do not be afraid to fight dirty. Play on exposed weaknesses and sink your claws into them.

Duality of Night. Be a healer and a hunter. Let your duality balance you and guide you through the night.

Okay. Okay. That looks good. Good foundations, good tenets. I should break down what exactly they each mean to me, in specific, but this? This is good.

Maybe we should start with the first. Specifically playfulness. Poise I’m...mediocre at and wit I’ve got...something for, but cat’s playfulness is where I’m struggling a lot.

Have I been going about it the wrong way? Have I been trying to go about it too much like Selina? No. No that’s not right, not like Selina, but like...Lovelace help me, that boy’s across an ocean and he gets the last laugh!

I’ve been trying too much to be like Dick. That’s why I’m struggling! I’m very much not Dick! I don’t have his capacity for on the spot wordplay, he’s had practice in it since what I can only assume is his first words.

So what can I bring to the table that fits “playfulness”? It’s very clearly not on the spot word play. Let’s see. Before everything started snowballing, I used to move all of Aaron’s furniture 1 inch at a time! I thought it’d be a good, noninvasive prank, but...I don’t think he ever noticed? Hm. Let’s look to cats because I don’t think I’ve got a good, natural grounding for playfulness. I’m a little skewed, I think, from all the bad foster homes and then the competitive nature of Henry pitting me against Aaron and then always losing at everything to Charles.

Chessie played with the magic lights. So maybe...toy with things that fascinate me? Like figure out what my metaphorical light or yarn ball is and just...toy with it?

Heathcliff might be a better role model. He stole socks and hoarded them, but he never really made a fuss when we took them back. Maybe...maybe some sleight of hand pranking on the right targets? I’m not stealing, not keeping, but...there’s no harm in just toying around with the right people, yeah?

Damn it, I wish I’d gotten Selina to show me some tricks in that department. In any department, honestly.

Thinking about it, the cats were never really playful in an overt way. They would just saunter over and roll over and if you didn’t read the signs right, they’d think it was a playfight when you tried to stroke their stomachs. And then some people, Aaron for example, would misread them and think that they were looking for a fight the whole time when really, there’s a disconnect in communication from cat to Aaron.

So maybe I’ve just been trying to force something to be obvious when I never really had to. I can put the puns down to a limit, keep them to a precise minimum, and just...Brunel’s top hat, I’ve been overthinking the whole thing. The very lesson Selina taught me, with the mask: just do.

I don’t have to fit some list of features that have to do with cat: I am cat. I make the rules and if anyone else can’t keep up, that’s not the cat’s fault. That’s how Selina does it and it makes her iteration of cat work. Different inputs, different algorithms (me and Selina are different), but whatever cat I end up being, it’s me. Me, moi, meow.

The tenets are fine, I think. They’re baseline rules I made up on impulse. They can ground, keep the impulses focused. Like Crookes’s first cathode ray tube.


	19. 12/25/87

Charles!!! Charles! Is! Here!

I’ve been trying to keep from bouncing, but just. HE IS HERE. HE IS SAFE. HE IS  ALIVE , THE BATTLE DIDN’T GET HIM HE’S OKAY.

Yeah, he  may have written the programming of the robot that shot me in the face, but apparently it wasn’t even supposed to target like that. I can’t even bring myself to be angry with him, I’m just so, so, so happy he’s okay!

Or at least. Seems to be okay. More okay than me and Aaron, that’s for sure. He seems happy and he’s dating Amadeus and they’re so purrrfectly  cute it’s unbelievable.

Amadeus is so smart that it’s a little intimidating at first, but Charles was the same way when I first met him. And Charles is so smitten with him, it’s absolutely and completely adorable.

And...I’m a little jealous. I don’t want to date Amadeus myself, he’s cute, but off-limits for incredibly obvious reasons. But I want something like that. I think. I dunno, it’s really only with Charles pointing it out that I’m allowing myself to be honest and say that I’ve got crushes.

Crushes on Dick and Tony.

Ugh, I just can’t win with those two, can’t I? Not interesting enough for Tony, not socially apt enough for Dick, just. UGH.

Charles had a full list for why Tony is a bad idea. I know Tony’s a bad idea, he’s pretty much got “Walking Bad Idea” written on his forehead, but...ugh he’s so cute it hurts. It hurts that I’m not  enough for him. But...but like Charles said, he’s a narcissist. Is anybody going to be good enough for him? But then...maybe I’m being too harsh on someone I’ve met maybe a handful of times. 

And then there’s Dick. I’ll admit: I still think about that one motorcycle ride during Halloween. It may have changed how I feel about learning how to drive. But I specifically wanna drive motorcycles. There’s that good memory there: riding behind him, trusting him, and just feeling the city fly behind me in chunks. I can carry that all my life. I’ll admit that I want  more too.


	20. 1/11/88

[There is a scratched out section again, with no words visible. It covers a good two lines of the notebook paper.]

Poise, Ada. Self deprecation isn’t helping.

Is it easier to be animal than person? Yes. Yes it is. Cats and owls don’t have to worry about the battle or moral integrity or sapient social etiquette. But that was never the point, that was  never the point.

So that leaves the question: what  is the point? What  is the point of all this, “I am Cat”, “I am Owl”, all said with the same authority as one would say “I am the King of Germany”. It is a focus, but is it restriction? Is it a leash?

It was supposed to be a prism for all of my very human “light”, a way to get it all into something comprehensible, but is the way I’m going about that achieving that or am I just limiting myself?

“Cats and owls aren’t good at social things, and thus I’m not either”. Sweet Aspasia’s knowledge, I  am limiting myself. I got mad about the “libraries and loneliness” dig from Dick, but he hit the nail right on the head.

It’s a reminder, but I let it become a Bruhn-damn package. I was the gunpowder, put into the package, but what good can gunpowder do like that? It has to be put into a mechanism, a firework, a gun, whatever, in order to give off sparks and  do something .

I  can’t do everything, but I sure as Lovelace’s algorithm can  try .


	21. 1/12/88

This is just utterly and entirely too poetic. No wonder Charles hates poetry, it just supplements seeming coincidences to try to make them  mean something, but in reality it’s just life, trudging onwards like a haphazard sack of semi-random events.

I thought the only thing I’d get from my biological father was my appearance. The pipe-cleaner arms, the skinny knees, the glass-blue eyes. Nope. I  also get the genetic potential to wield a power that can destroy almost anything I touch.

Just. Fucking. THANKS MAXIMUS “ULTIMATE PRICK” BOLTAGAN, I HATE IT.

That’s...not true. I  don’t hate it. Its raw manifestation? Is terrifying. If I could just...figure out control I could do so much with it. Disarm people, delete their weapons from existence. Open up pathways through labyrinths, cut through things to make roads for people to escape through. Watt’s wig, the  threat of it alone is a good defensive tool.

Why couldn’t I have just said all of that to Ms. King when she asked? Easy: it wouldn’t’ve been a good enough explanation. It wasn’t a good enough explanation of “I wanted my eye back and the pain to be gone” for why I let Wanda heal my eye, how could any of that ever be good enough for her?

Just...of all the things to come from my biological father, I was not expecting this, y’know? I was expecting like “limited telekinesis” or “ability to talk to animals” or “lightly enhanced reflexes” or “it’s just you Ada, but now you have bird wings”. I was expecting something small. I’m always the weakest link, power-wise, I wasn’t expecting anything near on this scale.

Maybe the gunpowder analogy in the other entry is a little  too on the nose...

In lighter news, I now am the owner of a very large, genderless cat thanks to Ex Nihilo (felt guilty because of the powers thing). Their name is Tug, short for their full name of Rum Tum Tugger. They are large, heavy, and dark. Their fur is fluffy, but smokey in color. Dark grey, then black cheetah-like spots. Eyes are a very crisp blue. Glass-blue.

They’re currently my writing desk for this. As soon as I sat down on my bed, they claimed my lap. They’re very warm. Having them around takes...an edge off. Before I got down to writing this, I almost dug my hands into my skin and tried to hurt myself. Then Tug made this...rrrrrr rrrrrreeeeeep chirp sound and wove around my feet and after that I just...I couldn’t. I’d never hurt Tug or a cat or an owl or even another person that way for these reasons. I shouldn’t do that to myself. No matter how shit I feel.


	22. 1/13/88

Flynn is...different. I don’t...I’m unsure how I feel about it. I got used to thinking around how Flynn used to be and now I just...

I’ll deal. I’ll keep calm, adapt. If I can accept the Cataclysm Claws, I can accept new Flynn.


	23. 1/19/88

It’s been a hot minute. Mostly, I’ve been busy with school and getting shit together.

Classes are definitely better than I thought they’d be. 

I was worried that combat training would be really hand-hold-y, delicate type stuff like the superficial kung-fu club back at GA (well, how it was  before Dick revealed his real colors). No, we’ve got an actual Amazonian training us in combat. It all kind of makes sense now: I never was into a lot of physical activity back home because it was boring. Half-assed? P.E. just seemed a waste with no actual meaningful output. But now I have a goal with it all that isn’t superficial like “I’ve gotta lose wait to fit into a dress”. The better I can hold my own here, the better I can hold my own on the field.

Intro to Comp-Sci is  fascinating . I had a good idea of it, but there’s so many more variables, so many more bits to it that I would’ve never been able to learn on my own back home. Though, it comes after Combat Training and I know my classmates in this class that are also in the other class are exhausted and have a lot of difficulty keeping up with Grace’s speed. I’ve taken to making an extra copy of my notes for Armando, since his adaptations for exhaustion usually wear off around time for this class. He only gets some of them since he only asks sometimes (rarely, honestly), but I don’t mind putting in the extra effort. It helps me study and I can catch mistakes in my notes with this kind of extra focus.

After a tiny hiccup day 1, Intro to Cluster Civs is out of this world cool. I don’t have a favorite civ yet, but I do really like this line Professor Zor El said about the Shi’ar: “Sharra and K'ythri are the gods in marriage in the Shi’ar pantheon. The gods who didn't want to marry, but were forced into it. In marriage they found strength and in strength they found love. That's what the Shi'ar Imperium does. It marries other cultures. Shotgun weddings.” She said it with the biggest smile, like it was this big joke that she was letting us all in on.

Power training’s going pretty well, all things considered. I’ve worked out some of Flynn’s new features. I think going the non-people route at first was a good way to go, since it helped me see the good in Flynn’s change. The little red bolts lead me, with some practice, to finding a bunch of the wildlife on campus. Let me see the quiet beauty of a tawny owl, see the playful scavenging of a couple of pine martens, even help me spot a herd of deer making their way south. After that, I finally turned it to people. Volunteers, specifically. I was honestly surprised anybody was willing at all, but Garfield, Karen, and Remy are apparently karma’s way of surprising me on that front. So from that, I’ve got the general following notes:

  * things Flynn can do:
    * detect powers
      * including possible biological origin points within the body, in the case of fellow inhumans
    * detect life energy (has been used to track wildlife, to an extent)
  * things Flynn can maybe do:
    * detect skills
    * detect things people want to keep hidden
      * detect lies
  * things Flynn can't do, currently:
    * keep online forever
  * amount of red around the head:
    * Aaron<Garfield<Remy<Karen<Charles 
      * discounting the directly power related red around both Charles and Ex Nihilo



After that session of fiddling with Flynn, I hung out with Remy. I wasn’t sure if it was a date going in, but if he was willing to play ball by my rules (I’m slowly figuring out there’s rules. Not other people’s rules, not rules I’ve derived from animal metaphors,  my rules), I figured why not. He’s cute, his style of flirting is charming once I wrapped my head around it, and the confidence is just relaxing to be around. I got him up to the roof (there’s a very lovely roof access ladder that he showed me) and we just...talked. I told him about the idiots at GA, he put a motion of clear communication for what we’d want, and we pretty civilly decided that we weren’t romantically gonna happen. Friendship was possible though. I’ve been reading a translation of  Chéri by Colette that Remy recommended. It’s one of those romance novels that you really need a diagram to fully get the picture of what’s happening, from what I can tell thus far. Remy’s teased me for it, but c’mon, the social intricacies are  vast and need to be fully charted since that’s definitely the core of the novel (it literally opens up with a talk about feelings between lovers who are 42 [the woman] and 25 [our main character, a man] while they’re both naked. Remy’s informed me that the older woman thing is a plot point in the sequel and is supposed to be weird). But get this, it turns out that Colette’s a French writer who, guess what,  also wrote a book called  La Chatte . Selina named her cat after a French writer! 

A French writer who wrote a short novel about a...love triangle between a man, his wife, and his cat. Honestly, it’s the most Selina thing I could ever think of: her just coyly implying “Sorry boy-toy, if it’s between you and the cat, it’s gonna be the cat. Every. Time.” Cue coy grin, hip bump designed to draw his eyes to her hips, and her crossing her arms. Still it’s a tiny mystery solved that I never thought would be solved, but wham bam, it’s a small world.

Anyways, movie nights with Remy’s friends have been...honestly, pretty fun. I’ve only been to two, but they’re chill in a similar kind of way to when I’d absorb Gotham at 11 pm to 1 am. It’s not the same kind of quiet, mind you, they’re all pretty chatty and social, and the movies put on are shitty in a way that I  truly have no words for (I swear, they found that movie with some truly bad science in it to test me to see if I’d explode. Testing to see if I was anal as Charles can be sometimes, maybe? Jokes on them, I’m the chill nerd).

Let’s see. Back to classes. Intro to Magic has been interesting. Order magic’s probably the most appealing, since it lines up with specific details and works with

Ugh. What IS the point of me trying to distract myself from why I really picked up the journal to write? I can’t...I can’t vent about it anywhere else because it’s stupid and dumb and inefficient. I’ve been making progress with J’onn with what we’ve been working on, with my trust issues and the trauma, I don’t...I don’t want to mess that up. So. It goes in here.

I’ve been trying to go back to how it  was with Charles and I. Trying to reach back, back to “It doesn't matter what they do to us, Ada. You look out for me and I look out for you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other” and that promise, but I...I failed. I failed in that promise, I couldn’t keep him safe and I wasn’t there for him when he got stabbed and I wasn’t there for him when he (probably) heard about his parents dying. And even putting that list of failures aside, there’s the whole “probably still working for the Maker” thing that just...I’m trying, I swear, it just...with that, it just feels like he’s not keeping his promise to me either. It feels like he’s leaving me behind. It felt like that in the beginning too, with the mysterious internship, but I’ve repeatedly talked myself into denial about that.

I just...I just want to know he has my back. Because I’d have his until the universe exploded and  after . But that’s not something you just  ask , y’know?


	24. 1/20/88

I needed a distraction and everything’s kind of settled in my life now, so I’ve finally called Tony.

Can’t really put into words how much I get relief out of him calling me Princess. Yeah, I know I’ve said that it bugs me, but...it’s not a pedestal name from him. It’s him trying to throw me off guard, trying to mess with me, and that just...actually kind of eases me off the bender I’ve been on, y’know?

Though, yay, a whole new bender in its place. I don’t know if he was joking or not, but he...he said it was Flynn’s fault his dad was killed. Make no mistake, Lex Luthor scared the everloving shit out of me at every opportunity, but...if I hadn’t accidentally bonded to Flynn, could he have just given Flynn back to the Kree? Could we have avoided this whole war, the focus on the Inhumans delayed for another time, if I hadn’t have bonded with Flynn?

That’s...that’s probably not a healthy question to focus on. Too much there that I don’t know. The Kree would’ve came after us Inhumans eventually. Luthor could’ve given back Flynn and have the Kree smash his head in for impertinence. Too many variables.

Still, I can’t help but be angry and sad. Not  at Tony, but at the Kree. Those feelings have been bubbling at the back of my brain for a while, but just...hearing “If you’re around, could I get that computer back seeing how my dad died for it and all” just made my heart  ache . I wanted to go get Ex Nihilo to turn back on my powers, modify me for space travel, and then someone to throw me into space because I just wanted to rip the Kree Empire a new one. They’ve hurt a lot of people, but...it felt worse, hearing Tony’s humor strain. Knowing he was hurt. We’re not close, but...he doesn’t deserve to be hurt. Have his ego taken down a couple pegs, sure, but not mourning his dad (if he’s even letting himself grieve at  all ) and possibly running his company. Tony’s so brilliant and funny, it’s all a certain kind of fire. Like starlight, almost. It’s not right that he got hurt this way.

I think I managed to help cheer him up though. We joked back and forth about our respective cities, I joked about how the skies were too empty around here, and then he told me that LexCorp was going to be selling  jetpacks in a year or two.

Lovelace help me, he probably had a hand in reverse engineering the Kree tech to make that possible. I don’t even have  words to express how attractive that idea is. It’s the him tinkering with Selina’s car thing all over again, down to the electrified feeling in my spine  again . Lovelace help me, that boy...

Just got the tap that Ms. King wants to see me in her office. Will update afterwards.

That...I wasn’t expecting any of that. Grace (she asked me to call her that, that’s not me assuming familiarity)  apologized . For being too harsh. I don’t know if J’onn talked to her (I don’t think so? Behind the back meddling doesn’t seem J’onn’s style. If it was, I think he would’ve poked Aaron to tell me he cares about me rather than having me ask him myself) or if she came to the conclusion on her own, but she apologized for the way she reacted to the whole...powers thing.

I never blamed her, honestly. I should’ve had more foresight and I should’ve asked what my powers were before agreeing to the process. I told her that, straight out. Now I’ve got a new Grace-ism to stick with me: “Know the weakness of weapons” and “Trust, but verify”.

I’m honestly just relieved that she’s being nice about the whole thing at all. And that she wasn’t another sticking reminder of my whole meh love life, but rather her wanting to make sure that I didn’t...end up like her? I think that was what she was getting at. There were some sour implications she made about her own past, like before when we talked after Mom found out I was Cat’s Eye with the foster family thing.

“What I was capable of at 16, Adalynn, had virtually no relevance to what I was able to achieve by 20. You are more than you know, but I ask you not to break yourself upon the altar of becoming such quickly.”

It’s a lot to unpack. It’s definitely not a “what happens now doesn’t matter” message. Grace doesn’t strike me as that type. I’m taking it more as a “slow down, don’t break yourself” message, since that makes the most sense and is the way I responded to her in the moment, which she didn’t contradict.

She knows the battle. I didn’t even have to vocalize it, she just...knew. She knows that I’m 110% throwing myself into training myself for it, probably gets why, and even then is telling me to slow my roll. Let myself grow, let me be a whole person. I was already motivated to try that, but...hearing it from Grace, it makes me think it’s okay? Okay to try?

I had thought that it’d been luck that people help out, but Grace said it was a strength. I can see how that’d be applicable: I’d be dead at least twice over if it wasn’t for Aaron, Avery, and Dick. I’d be down an eye if it wasn’t for Wanda being willing to help me out. And I wouldn’t be here, learning all of this stuff about myself and about the things I’m capable of, if it wasn’t for Grace.

We got to talking about Wanda, because...well “worried” is an understatement. But Grace says it’s just overwhelmed by the volume of people, which...hoo boy, I get. I get that. I’m going to go out to the local area, see if I can find some fabric and see if I can’t give her something besides school (read: people) to think about. I’ll talk about it with her first: I can easily guess that she won’t wanna make clothes for herself, doesn’t even wanna talk about herself right now. And she  does give me wide-eyed blinks every time she sees me in a black t-shirt (which is every time she sees me, for the record. I own approximately ten black t-shirts, which is enough for the full week and I do laundry on Saturday), so maybe giving her the go-ahead to get me shirts that are not black t-shirts would be motivating? I don’t know how fashion people work, but it’s a shot!


	25. 1/26/88

Okay, Ada, what have we learned?

We’ve learned that Anthony Luthor-Stark is off-limits. Oh,  why is he off-limits, Ada? Hasn’t he saved our lives indirectly a whole bunch?

Yes. But you can say the same shit about the people who benefit from LexCorp charity programs. You stupid bitch.

You thought you were  special ? That you could save him? What a load of fucking garbage. He’s a rich asshole, he doesn’t need to be saved.

You weren’t thinking. That’s why he’s off-limits: he affects our judgement capabilities and needs to be out of our lives for fucking ever. You could’ve used that wish to gain strength in the battle, but instead, you gave it away to some stupid boy who didn’t need it.

You’re right. You don’t deserve happiness, you stupid bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For context: Ada had a reality bending wish she could've used to further her education and instead, she gave it to Tony.


	26. 1/28/88

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "B" Ada refers to is Batman. Because of course!
> 
> The entity is the Empty Hand from DC Comics.
> 
> The reason that the 4 characters were picked was because they're all Player Characters, but Ada doesn't know that. We have not reached full Deadpool with Ada, but I'm pretty certain that Aaron is like. A hop, skip, and five or so jumps from going full Deadpool-4th-wall-break.

TWO DAYS. TWO. DAYS. I CAN NOT EVEN GO. TWO DAYS. WITHOUT SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENING.

Breathe. Breathe. I just.

[There’s tear stains along the page, droplets here and there blurring the ink ever so slightly in numerous places]

Is this what it means to be off the path that Sensei meant? Fuck. Ever since I left Gotham, it’s been miserable. Because of outside forces and my own damn fault.

Let’s just. Break down everything chronologically and absorb it the best we can, okay?

There’s the Anthony shit. I’m gonna avoid him the rest of my life, which I think is pretty doable. He’s got no reason to want to interact with me, I’ve got no reason to interact with him, this is fine.

My date with Armando. It wasn’t Knock a Knight. It was...it was an actual date. We saw a nice karate film, got some Chinese take out, and just...talked. It was nice and fun and just...solid. I think...I think I like him a lot. He’s sweet in a way I didn’t even know I wanted, nice in a way that...I felt safe. I don’t really...feel safe with people all that much. Everything always feels like a gamble, but...after initial anxiety, Armando isn’t a gamble. Not a 50/50 bet, he seems like a solid bet. It was pretty great right up until we got home and had an extraplanar entity in the backseat. Because. Of course we did.

I’d like to say that I am proud of myself for at least one thing. I did not make a “cat in the bag” joke when the entity told me to get into the burlap sack. It was at the absolute tip of my tongue. I could’ve made it. And it would’ve felt  so good to make it too, but it was not the time to make cat jokes. Or...or was it?

After some pacing about my room, I’m putting that at 50/50 odds.

I was full ready to follow what Grace has said, to  not throw myself into another dimension at the mercy of another extraplanar entity  again , but...when the entity threatened Armando’s soul, there was absolutely no other choice I could’ve made. I didn’t want to test his powers like that and even then, anyone else in his shoes, I’d throw myself into the fire every time before I put someone else there.

It turned out to be a game show, because of course it did. It was me, Avery, Aaron, and Elena. Me, Aaron, Avery almost makes a kind of sense: we’ve been a group since Gotham. Elena’s what throws that off. What does this entity know that we fucking don’t?

I did pretty okay, I think. I broke down a riddle or two and did my best with a puzzle. I knew my limits, worked around them, had a good showing. Elena was also super impressive, figuring ways around her challenges. Aaron got...surprisingly easy challenges? Don’t know what that’s about. Avery...

I never knew Avery was like this. He always seemed so rational, so put-together, I thought I was the reckless one. But even I wouldn’t throw myself out of a sub-sub-dimension to go  float in the Void . I just can’t even follow the reasoning, what was there to even gain? You don’t do that shit with these kinds of entities, you play by their rules until they let you go. Not fuck with them until they eat your soul. It’s almost like he [the words are heavily scratched out, some of the black ink smudged with water damage]

Then B got involved. Because of course. It was part of one of my challenges, confront a past mistake. The entity was using B to fuck with me, but little did said entity know that there wasn’t anything they could make B say that he hasn’t already said in my head. I had every out, a lifeline, a reroll, everything, but...this is a mistake I needed to confront. I needed to confront what I did about the egg. That felt right, or as right as it can feel when it’s being brought on by a gameshow run by a hell-lord. But everything was wrong from the get-go because the entity was puppeteering B. That wasn’t  really B: the seeds of what he might actually feel might’ve been in all of that, but the legitimacy of the performance all broke down the minute it was revealed that he was being puppeted. That he was just going to be forced to rail against whatever I had to say. That wasn’t a real confrontation, that was an attempt at mind games gone wrong because the entity misjudged me and B (who managed to break the control of a hell-lord on his mind, so like props to B). A real confrontation would’ve had both of us fully in control of what we were doing and saying. The entity didn’t even let me have that much.

Then we saw Avery, one last time. He was...horribly mutated. Like an octopus mermaid..octomer? I’m going with octomer. Then he had his mouth taken away because, despite everything, he was still  sassing the entity. At what point do you have to wonder if Avery [the words are scratched out again]

I could’ve been his host, you know. Could’ve brought him back in my body, figured out what to do from there. But...it didn’t seem worth the risk. But now with Avery dead, I just can’t help but wonder what good I could’ve done if I had calculated differently.

I just feel so lost. Ever since coming here, ever since leaving Gotham, I feel lost. I’m off the path.

Let’s do a re-re-eval.

  * What do I enjoy?
    * Reading
    * Helping others
    * Learning fighting techniques
    * Writing song lyrics (Charles, forgive me)
  * What makes me happy?
    * Doing what I enjoy
    * Tug’s little “activation noise” if I accidentally wake them up from a nap
    * The feeling I get in my chest from a good run. It’s a happy ache that makes me want to climb a skyscraper or a tree or something tall
  * What am I good at?
    * I don’t know?
    * Being a student
    * Tutoring
    * Being an extra set of hands
    * Running my mouth. Hmmm. Possibly weaponize my tendency to ramble as a disarming technique?
  * Who makes me happy?
    * Charles Mills
    * Amadeus Cho
    * Wanda Maximoff
    * Aaron Hamilton
    * Mom (Cathleen Hamilton)
    * Armando Muñoz
    * Rum Tug Tugger Knight



So. From that, I think the path says we go on being a student. We learn, we help others learn, we go from there.


	27. 1/31/88

January has come and gone. Now, we’re at February. Aspasia damn it, I remember when my biggest concern for February was idiot high schoolers playing pranks on me for Valentine’s Day.

Now...now we’re in a whole different ball game.

Some updates: Anthony Luthor-Stark is attending Erik Magnus School for the Gifted. Because  of course . With the timeline shifted, we’re not on the same path as we had been, but Amadeus’s financial schemes be damned, I’m not taking advantage of that to rekindle anything. Anthony and I are bad for each other, simple as that. Maybe once I’m done metaphorically killing my romantic feelings for him in the backyard, maybe we can try friendship. But right now? It’s not looking likely.

I think this journal is probably the last place where I’ll get to be Adalynn Knight. Because I’m taking the Boltagon throne.

Adalynna Boltagon. Heir of Attilan, a nation now in ruins from the Kree invasion. A princess.

Fuck.

A perfectly reasonable set of questions to ask is “Why the fuck did you take that position? You hate being in charge? You hate wearing dresses? You hate the idea of wearing a crown so much that you once bit the hand of a Lanying-damned mafioso hard enough to make him bleed, so  why , Ada, why?”

Easy. Because it had to be done to make sure that hell-lords can’t waltz into campus and steal another set of kids. The Rock of Eternity wouldn’t give resources otherwise. We didn’t have powerful enough magic to protect ourselves. It was either the Rock or a country’s patronage and I am not handing any of my classmates to any country to be a weapon. Absolutely not.

If we have to rely on any country or nation, let’s make it the one I’m going to try being in charge of.

Lovelace help me, maybe I’ll even manage to pull shit together well enough to get a rescue party for my uncle, my aunt, and everyone else the Kree has captive right now. Maybe, by being all like “what’s up, Danger? Don’t be a stranger” in regards to putting a target on myself, my spawn-sire will wriggle out of whatever grass he’s slithering in and maybe, just maybe, we can get that danger out of the way before it becomes a problem or before I lose what support I have.

Maybe both of these things will be done before I lose support, my real family, my friends, everything, to this gamble.


	28. 2/17/88

[Large parts of the page are tear-stained and the margins scratched out with ink, in sharp geometric designs. The usual black ink has bits of red, like Ada swapped between black and red pens for this entry]

Wanda hates me now. It’s deserved, I didn’t tell her about the details I saw during the whole hell-lord thing. That’s my fuckup.

I don’t deserve anything good right now anyway. I’ll make it up in time, with me doing the whole queen of Attilan thing. I’ll keep her and everyone else safe. My classmates, my Gotham family, the staff, my Attilanian family. 

It doesn’t matter what I lose. That I’m losing the teenage years I should’ve had. I lost my childhood, what’s a couple years as a teenager? No more movie dates, no more college planning...a queen doesn’t do that shit. Probably doesn’t steal coffee from the kitchens either.

Like, Wanda’s  right to be mad at me. I could’ve given her a lead so much sooner to her life, to find out more about all the little things she’s been missing because she didn’t know they existed.

You never know how much the little things matter until they’re taken away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *plays the world's tiniest violin*


	29. 2/20/88

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entry is why the world's smallest violin was played last chapter. Ada, _Wanda loves you enough to rewrite the world for you, you ninny._
> 
> Basically, we had a huge event happen in-game. Think the lovechild of Infinity Gauntlet and House of M. Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch used samples of blood from various PCs and NPCs to summon the various Infinity Stones (for example, Ada's summoned the Power Stone and now I have the headcanon that the Boltagon bloodline is cursed by that stone or the Kree used it in the Inhumans creation process [TERRIGEN SMALL TINY POWER STONES? Gods guys, Lili's made me the incarntion of the Pepe Silvia meme I swear] or connected to it more directly in this universe). Then she _fought_ Thanos and Grace (Grace being her older sister figure), the Living Tribunal, and who knows _what else_ in order to reset the entire universe. I called the event "Seeing Red", but Lili (the DM) cheerfully calls it "a Reboot".
> 
> I was screaming and shaking my fist at the ceiling the whole session. I cannot give Lili enough kudos for blindsiding me and Ian with this event (Andy [Avery's old player] knew and had rewritten his character's backstory to match, and I have 0 idea if Marci knew ahead of time), it was so surreal and exciting to watch Wanda just absolutely _snap_ (haha, get it, snap, because she had the Infinity Gauntlet) because she cared so much about the world.

So, if anyone’s been reading this timeline’s version of this journal, sorry, you’re going to be hit with something like a plot twist (if you can get through this new cipher, I don’t know if you can since Attilanian might not exist as a language anymore).

Hi, I’m Adalynn Knight and I remember the old timeline. Not this new one from which this new version of my journal’s from, one that Wanda apparently tailored for the people she cares about (which...very obviously includes me given a lot of what I’ve seen thus far. I was wrong, she doesn’t hate me, she very obviously cares a lot), but the one prior. I think me remembering that kind of...kills this timeline’s version of myself and now I get to wear her skin and live her life. Oh that’s morbid.

Aaron...Aaron remembers too. He’s pissed. I don’t blame him. He’s on high alert because he sees all of this as hostile action and he’s not...he’s not entirely wrong.

Wanda, for some reason or another, broke the universe with some kind of mechanism. Essentially, she killed the universe we used to live in. All the people we knew and loved are technically dead. That’s slowly sinking in with me, the sheer magnitude of what she did to lay out what’s around me currently.

We’re back in Gotham. I have both eyes, Flynn’s back to blue. We’re on the Guardians again, but Dick’s not a part of it this time, but Emma and Armando are? Both of them got moved to Gotham and act different than their old timeline counterparts.

Emma’s...mellow. Like, she’s still Fancy McFancypants, Queen of All Things Incredibly Fashionable and High Tier, but...she acts like we’re friends? And I have memories, kind of, of this timeline where she...she apologized for being awful to me in middle school. She’s shotcaller of this new Guardians, goes by Diamond.

But the more surreal thing is that in this timeline, I’m dating Armando and have been for...a year and a half? A year and a half of memories I don’t have. I have memories of a few dates, but...I’m missing so much. I didn’t get to know the old Armando as much as I should’ve, I should’ve written up a list of questions and we could’ve traded, but for the moment, old Armando’s dead and now I have this new one. That...that likes me a lot. I’m quoting him, he said that. He still has that safe feeling I got from the old one. I had even showed up to Gotham Academy with Aaron, playing along even as the old bullies I remembered jeered at me. But before all of those old wounds could get too much salt, Armando showed up and he...he stood up for me. Directly.

Not keep his mouth shut and work a scheme or two like Aaron to get them back, not quietly let me take it like Charles, not the silent middle finger like Isabel used to, but Armando actually verbally told them to shut up and defended me.

It might seem like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I have to stress that no one’s ever done that before for me. I do that for others. To someone else, I guess this would be something small, like “why worry about the difference”, but considering that this Armando is obviously dating me because Wanda set things up that way, it...it speaks volumes about what she was aware of what I wanted.

Like the Gotham thing, the Guardians thing: those two I can reasonably guess she got from surface level, they’re not secrets that I was hiding that I love being in Gotham and that I loved being on the Guardians. Anybody could’ve figured that out if they saw me in both environments. I guess if someone pieced together different parts of my life: the letter to DIck when I told him he broke Italy Protocol, the conversation with Remy, bits from this journal...I guess she could’ve worked it out from bits of this journal.

She knew I had a crush on Armando: I told her that, it’s not a mystery how she knew/knows that. I mean, look at him. For like a hot minute. It just hit me that I’m dating him and I’m torn between joy, confusion, and self-hatred.

I get everything I wanted, but at what cost? I have to examine this with stuff like butterfly effect in mind, since that’s the easy explanation for a lot of differences thus far. Me in this timeline never bounced around foster homes, so I was never feral, so I never met and defended Charles back in elementary school. So Charles here isn’t [there’s some tear-stains lightly distorting the words “my friend, my brother, my platonic soulmate, pick any of those.”] So what else has been changed like that? If I’ve been hurt that way, accidentally probably on Wanda’s part, who else has been hurt that way? Who else has had good aspects of their lives taken from them because the variables of the formula’s been shifted? I got off lucky, but are there people who’ve been more hurt by this?

Fuck, I need more data. I need more information. Who was I here?


End file.
